Slash real life floor

Russia is huge the country spans through eleven different time zones across two different

Continents and takes up about one-eighth of all the land on earth

Despite all of this though. Russia has a critical problem. Russia is shrinking it's not shrinking in land

Russia has plenty of that

Instead russia's shrinking problem is with her population, which has been nearly

Continuously going down for nearly 30 years

Now when you're only looking at the size of countries based on how much land they have Russia clearly wins that race

but when you factor in Russia's population of about one hundred and forty four million people

Russia comes in as only the ninth largest country in the world behind a lot of other countries that are

Significantly smaller in land like Pakistan Nigeria and most interestingly

Bangladesh a country that is

118 times

Smaller than Russia but has over 20 million more people living there an even stranger case is the island of Java

Inside of Indonesia. Java is

123 times smaller than Russia is but the islands population of

141 million easily compares with Russia's entire population of

144 million and it didn't used to always be this way as recently as

1900 the territory of modern Russia itself without factoring in the rest of the Russian empires

population at the time had the third highest

population of any country in the world only remaining behind

Qing China and British controlled India

there were more Russians at the time than there were Americans but within a century all of that had

Completely changed and the biggest reason why it changed and the reason why modern Russia is still struggling so much with this

problem is largely because of the second world war a war which absolutely

devastated the Soviet Union and Russia specifically in just four years of war between 1941 and

1945 the USSR lost a mind-boggling

13.7 percent of her entire

Population if we divide the USSR up into its separate Republic's we can see that Russia itself lost

12.7% of

all of her people more than one out of every four people in Belarus died while Ukraine

Lithuania Latvia Armenia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia

Estonia and Moldova also all took heavy losses

along with other Eastern European countries like Poland the fact of the matter is is Eastern Europe in general took a

Massive population hit in only four years and the scars that that war left upon society here can still be felt today

one statistic that I'm reminded about that is

Particularly haunting is the one about males born inside of the Soviet Union during

1923 if you were born a boy

Anywhere inside of the USSR that year then right at Birth. You would only be given a

20% chance of staying alive long enough to see your 23rd birthday in

1946 80

Percent of all boys born in the USSR that year would be dead by the time of January 1st

1946 just

23 years later

if we take a look at Russia's population pyramid a chart which shows

people living inside of a country of all ages

You can see healthy growth at first and then a massive gash during the years of World War two in the years immediately

Following the war the population began to rebound but slowed down in the late 1960s

this slowdown was the first echo of the Second World War all

Those millions of young people who died in the 1940s who didn't have any children of their own

meant that all of their millions of unborn children

Weren't alive to have their own children twenty to twenty-five years later by the time of the late 1960s

Which caused population growth to slag?

fast-forward another 20 to 25 years to the early

1990s and you can see the second echo of World War 2 where the great-grandchildren of

Everybody who died during the war would have been born had they survived the echo of wars effect on

Population at the time was worsened by the fact that in 1991 the USSR

itself collapsed which through Russia into deep economic and social

upheaval the birthrate plummeted while the death rates soared Russia experienced its first actual drop in population since

1945 in

1992 the first year after the Soviet Union's collapse

Massive economic and social hardships experienced in the chaos of that collapse

contributed to many people just deciding not to have children or to migrate away from the country and

Combined with a second echo of the war Russia's population

continued to shrink every single year from 1992 up until 2012 Russia began to grow again between

2013 and 2015 but then has shrunk more every year from

2016 up to the present some of this modern shrinkage can be attributed to the second world wars third echo on russian society

Which is happening right now

the

Great-great-grandchildren the people who died without children in the war would normally be getting born right now. And since that's obviously not happening

It's having a marked effect, but there are other factors at work as well

Another is that Russia is currently experiencing more economic hardships in 2014

Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula a move which added over 2 million people into Russia's population

pool and which still wasn't enough to boost Russia's population back to the level seen in

1991 with several sanctions passed against Russia by several countries around the world as a consequence of this annexation

Russia shrunk from the world's ninth largest economy in 2014 a position equal to Russia's rank in population

Down to the world's 12th largest economy five years later in 2019 with via Canada and South Korea

overtaking her another problem that hasn't been mentioned yet and that

Certainly plays a factor is Russia's geography and the fact that most of it is pretty inhospitable in modern times 77

percent of Russia's entire population or

110 million people live inside just the European part of Russia where the temperatures are more mild

But this part of Russia only accounts for 23 percent of Russia's land the rest belongs to a huge region called

Siberia which is the inverse of European Russia it accounts for

77 percent of Russia's land, but only 23 percent of Russia's population if

Siberia was an independent country. It would still be the largest country on earth in size

But it would have a smaller population than California

Siberia is largely

Undeveloped and extremely hostile to human habitation with brutal and long winters with absurdly cold temperatures

because of this most of Siberia is

completely empty without many human settlements and as a result Russia doesn't really have as much land that can be settled by people as

It may seem at first

Bangladesh and the island of Java may be over a hundred times smaller than Russia in total land

But they arguably have more easily settleable and rich

Agricultural land than Russia does which in part helps to explain why they have higher or similar populations

Russia's geography has in a way always been one of the country's greatest challenges to overcome

And it continues to be a massive hurdle for the country to overcome in order to expand her

population when you combine all of these factors together along with other issues like a

moderately low rate of immigration in regards to Russia's size and it begins to paint an overall picture if the current shrinking

Population trend continues up until 2050 Russia will find itself in a position where she is only the 14th largest country in the world

far behind countries like Nigeria Pakistan

Ethiopia Bangladesh the Philippines

Mexico the Democratic Republic of the Congo and even Egypt

Those estimates are the official estimates of the United Nations though, and they're far from the most pessimistic

other estimates by other demographers believe that if the population shrinkage returns to the same levels that Russia experienced during the

1990s the population could dwindle down to as little as

110 million making Russia about equal to what Iran will probably look like at the same time in terms of population

Numbers the next 30 years will almost certainly be an interesting and decisive time for the Russian nation

Understanding Russia is complicated especially from an outsider's perspective

Winston Churchill once said of Russia that it is a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside of an enigma

So if you really want to go into some serious depth behind

understanding Russian history and civilization

There's no better book than a history of Russia from Peter the Great to Gorbachev written and narrated by Mark Steinberg

The entire audio book is offered on audible and it's nearly 19 hours long

The book would usually cost 41 95, but you can listen to all of it completely for free at audible

Honorable is a leading provider of audiobooks and other spoken word entertainment

They have an unmatched selection of great titles covering everything from science fiction and fantasy to history and business

I

Really love audiobooks because you can essentially listen to and learn about anything

While you're doing anything if you're stuck in a commute to work

It can become a great opportunity to listen to your favorite book or subject and you can actually begin to enjoy

Yourself best of all though is that you can start listening with a 30-day free trial and choose to listen to any one book

They have for free. It doesn't even have to be about Russian history. But if you're into that hey

And you'll get to audible originals for free, too

You just need to visit audible.com slash real life lore or text real life floor 2 5 0 0 - 5 0

0 and as always thank you for watching